Identify traffic-stealing competitors
Find untapped keyword opportunities
Create content that ranks higher
Yandex chose the Bynet Week conference in the city of Minsk in Belarus to announce that they have “Started to remove links gradually” from the Yandex MatrixNet algorithm for commercial queries in just the Moscow region. Alexander Sadovsky, Head of Web Search at Yandex, made the announcement yesterday following on from his original explanation in […]
Yandex has announced that it has signed a deal with Facebook which will give the leading search engine in Russia access to the Facebook firehose for “public” content published in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, other CIS countries and Turkey, where Yandex also operates. Content will be available for indexing by Yandex as soon as it has […]
Ilya Segalovich, co-founder of Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine, was disconnected from life support on July 27. During routine cancer treatment, he unexpectedly slipped into a coma earlier in the week from which he did not recover. I had the honor of knowing Ilya personally. In addition to being one of the most brilliant search […]
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of odd spending patterns in client accounts, especially when it comes to international Google AdWords campaigns. No, I’m not referring to mobile or enhanced campaigns — I’m talking about to a failure to account for regional differences in how online consumers search and convert. How you approach the issue […]
I was pleased to be part of a great panel at SMX London on prioritizing your search marketing efforts. It included SEO veterans Mikkel deMib Svendsen of deMib.com, Julia Longdon of ContentMango and Dave Davies of Beanstalk. For me, this was an extremely useful session with a huge hidden ROI benefit for search marketers not […]
Yandex has presented what it claims is a new concept in search engine results pages to a Russian audience at an online industry conference in Moscow. They’ve nicknamed the new concept “Islands,” but are describing it functionally as “Interactive Snippets” and the next step on from rich snippets. To be launched in a few weeks […]
Last week, I was lucky to join a number of great speakers at the iLive conference in Riga, Latvia. As with all conferences, I learned a lot. (I simply can’t relate to those who go to a conference and say they’ve heard it all before.) I learned at least as much from the people I met […]
Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex has launched an approach to personalizing search results for users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, affecting 75-80% of search queries and potentially all of the search results a user sees. Yandex has been testing the approach throughout the last year and found that users click 37% more often on […]
Last week, someone accused me of being too technical when describing geo-targeting settings — it followed a conversation where I was told that one of my discussions was not “advanced” enough! So, I apologise in advance, as this post is going to be too technical for some and not for others! It’s also a little […]
Almost anyone who specialises in international SEO or SEM will tell you that within a few years, it becomes pretty obvious that most marketers’ problems have little to do with SEO or SEM techniques and are much more to do with brands cutting corners in their enthusiasm to go global. It’s inevitable really. Organizations expanding […]
Sometimes it feels like a one-man crusade. Now in my 15th year of search marketing (yes, I started young) I have been trying to explain to Global SEOs for much of that time that translation is not a perfect process. But it appears I have been talking to the wrong people. I should have been […]
Usually, when I’m asked if “international” search or SEO is really different, the person asking the question has made up their mind that it’s actually not. Usually, they have a view that international SEO is all about infrastructure, domains and local domains and not much else. But is this true? You’ll probably not expect me, […]
Google has been moving lots of goal posts for us all recently and the “Hreflang” tag is a case in point. A succession of Google speakers has presented the latest “Hreflang” thinking at International Search Summits @SMX throughout 2012. On each occasion, the presentation and explanation was different from the one before. The bad news […]
As the first of the International Search Summits of 2012 looms large (at SMX West next week) I felt it was time to review what seem to be the most significant 10 issues for search marketers at this time. What’s interesting to note is that just one year ago, this list was very different. 1. […]
People are generally vaguely aware that debates have been taking place in Europe over new legislation which principally affects the use of “Cookies”. European legislation is inevitably more complex than elsewhere because of the way it is drafted by the European Commission and then individually interpreted, translated and re-drafted by each country. Today, I’m focusing […]
Last Monday, Google announced that they had released “new markup for multilingual content”, see the webmaster tools blog post here. Even for those of us that work in the field of looking after global websites, this produced relatively unexciting headlines along the lines of “Google Launches New Multilingual Markup — Wow”. Big yawn. In fact, digging […]
Did you think the search engine war was over and that Google had won? Perhaps you believed that there were a few outposts still resisting the Google conquest, but expected that they’d give in eventually? If so, you’d better sit down and take a strong drink as the first salvos in the new Search Engine […]
Yandex now has deeper cash pockets following its IPO -- so where and in what type of expansion is the company going to expand? Moving west and south perhaps? There are good competitive reasons why Yandex needs to take its battle with Google to other markets -- but it also needs to be secure at home -- in Russia.
Privacy is a much discussed topic and most focus seems to be privacy issues in Europe. But people have different attitudes to privacy throughout the globe with some having an intense fear of compromising their privacy or identify. How does this affect search? And where are the most privacy senstiive nations>
Yandex is one of the world's leading search engines and number one in Russia. But what are they like as a company as few know too much about them! I visited their offices in Moscow...this is what I learned!
Do you need to localize your website to reach local markets anymore? Maybe not since Google last week rolled our a feature to many markets globally, to automatically translate a keyword and search for results from webpages everywhere in every language? What does this mean about our future strategies? Do we need to have a fundamental re-think about international search?
So global search marketers, should you be studying major religious festivals to understand their impact on your peaks and troughs — after all they may explain why your seasonal patterns globally don’t match what you’re used to. Making notes of the major festivals which will take place during your campaign year in the markets you are targeting can help.
Google Instant certainly got people talking -- where it was rolled out that is because it didn't make it to rest of the globe instantly. Comscore has released figures showing its impact on search shares in the US -- but what are the predictions for the rest of the world. Will Google Instant be a runaway global success -- instantly?
Not a day seems to pass when there isn't some new feature announcement by the search engines or some acquisition of an organization we've none of us heard of, but which powers lots of sites we didn't know needed powering. Its complex enough for anyone - but if you're in charge of a 25-language site running in 170 countries, its more than mind boggling - it can be soul destroying. Just how do we cope?
A raft of recent search engine developments in the Far East means the picture is not so wonderfully clear anymore. In Japan, Korea and China there have been signficant search engine market changes. Let's try and figure out what's going on?
Is going global too expensive or too complicated for small businesses -- or is the opportunity just the same for them as huge conglomerates? Indeed, is it possible that the opportunity is relatively-speaking even greater for mom and pop than for Mr. Big Corporation?
Website translation processes can often conflict with SEO objectives. How can these two opposites be reconciled? With such huge sums invested in localization -- it makes sense to get the maximum return on investment -- but you need to review the process. Here's how!
The search volumes for keywords in Google's Keyword Tool are not always what they seem - especially if they have more than one meaning in different languages. How does the Keyword Tool deal with these and how do we avoid making incorrect assumptions about keywords?
Today’s news that Google is defying Chinese authorities by no longer censoring search results leaves many wondering whether the government will simply force Google to cease operations in China. Even if that happens, China is still an important market to consider.
Choosing a content management system which helps you make progress internationally - rather than blocking every move - is a good plank to have in your strategy. Even if you're not planning that international expansion just yet. Reason? Retro-fitting a new content management system to an existing project can bring a heap of extra pressure - just when you need it to be helping!
Is your international search marketing suffering from content avoidance syndrome? Are domains and hosting top of the list with a little dabbling in managing duplication? It's not too late - if you've recognized the problem you're halfway to solving it and focusing more on content investment!
Social media marketing is pretty tricky - but it is too tricky to ever roll out international campaigns? Where do you start from when you're targeting international social networks - success at home or do you need to start all-over?
Soon it will be possible to register domain names using local language character sets creating vast new opportunities for marketers - and domain name sellers. Time to act to protect your own domain names and trademarks in the new languages.